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February 11
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Jessica
gave
 
to:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Hardcover)
by Milan Kundera
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my rating:
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Jessica said:
"The book seems to have a conscious Project that annoys me. I feel like M`s comments about the Art of the Novel pertain to this book that seems very much as though it is trying to write itself into a Eurocentric tradition of the Novel, down to the sma...more
The book seems to have a conscious Project that annoys me. I feel like M`s comments about the Art of the Novel pertain to this book that seems very much as though it is trying to write itself into a Eurocentric tradition of the Novel, down to the smallest Classical namedrops - Bach, Apollonian and Platonic ideals...It tries to be profound with its play on binaries - Lightness, Weight - Levity, Hostility - Male, Female, etc. It sets up what seem to be clear binaries, but also - while clearly stating that the best novels are ones where we need to read between the lines - to show that binaries are only made to be deconstructed. It is a book about margins, the spaces between the binaries that it constructs. This would be interesting I think given the play with gender and also the political context in which the story unfolds - totalitarian Czechoslovakia - (it seems this play with binaries is definitely connected to the politics of the novel) however the Project is too conscious - the reader is practically hit over the head with the fact that something Complicated is happening here. For example, do we really need to link women to territory so explicitly.¨Sabrina, you are a woman.¨ She could not understand why he accentuated the obvious with the solemnity of a Columbus who has just sighted land.¨ 89
Yet the novel would still merit a really fruitful discussion. Although it is a bit too obvious that Something is happening, it is not entirely clear to me exactly what that is. I like the shadows of the book, its margins. For example, we have Thomas, classical womanizing man. But we also have Sabrina, a woman who seems to be his `foil` of sorts, the only person who really understands him, and also a manizing (there is no such word...) woman. The spotlight is on Thomas (we meet Sabrina through him), such that a reader might almost miss what is more subtly happening with Sabrina. The novel seems to be anchored somewhere (Thomas, in the boundaries defined by the binaries - lightness and weight, man and woman) but ends up being about the interstital spaces between them. Those spaces - both in gender and politics - would be interesting to explore....less
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Jessica
is currently reading:
Empire (Paperback)
by Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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February 05
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Jessica
is currently reading:
El Matadero: La Cautiva (Paperback)
by Esteban Echeverria
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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read in February, 2008
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Jessica
gave
to:
El Juguete Rabioso / the Mad Toy (Clasicos Universales)
by Roberto Arlt
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my rating:
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read in January, 2008
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January 18
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Jessica
gave
to:
The Country of the Pointed Firs (Paperback)
by Sarah Orne Jewett
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Jessica said:
""when one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person" (1).
"deeper intimacy" (4)
"her house was decorated with West Indian curiosities" (7)
"I view...more
"when one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person" (1).
"deeper intimacy" (4)
"her house was decorated with West Indian curiosities" (7)
"I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled newspaper. In the good old days, a good part o' the best men here knew a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them" (12).
"The air was very sweet; one could not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny continent and home of fisherfolk" (25).
"It was indeed a tribute to Society to find a room set apart for her behests out there on so apparently neighborless and remote an island" (27).
"At the end, near the woods, we could climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of island ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one in, - that sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always give" (30). ...less
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Jessica
gave
to:
City of Glass (The New York Trilogy, Vol 1)
by Paul Auster
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my rating:
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Jessica said:
""Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city - never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him" (8).
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Jessica
gave
to:
Three Guineas (Annotated)
by Virginia Woolf
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my rating:
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Jessica said:
"public/private
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes....Let us then by a way of very elementary beginning lay before you a photograph - a crudely colored photograph - of your world as it appears to us who see it from...more
public/private
"Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes....Let us then by a way of very elementary beginning lay before you a photograph - a crudely colored photograph - of your world as it appears to us who see it from the threshold of the private house; through the shadow of the veil that St. Paul still lays upon our eyes; from the bridge which connects the private house with the world's public life. Your world then, the world of professional public life, seen from this angle undoutably looks queer" (18).
"Odour then - or shall we call it 'atmosphere'? - is a very important element in professional life; in spite of the fact that like other important elements it is impalpable. It can escape the noses of examiners in examination rooms, yet penetrate boards and divisions and affect the sense of those within. It's bearing upon the case before us is undeniable. For it allows us to decide up in the case of Baldwin v. Whitake that both the Prime Minister and the Almanack are telling the truth. It is true that women civil servants deserve to be paid as much as men; but it is also true that they are not paid as much as men. The discrepancy is due to atmosphere. Atmosphere plainly is a very mighty power. Atmosphere not only changes the sizes and shapes of things; it affects solid bodies, like salaries, which might have been though impervious to atmosphere" (52).
"adultery of the brain" (93)
...less
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Jessica
is currently reading:
Rayuela
by Julio Cortazar
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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January 10
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Jessica
gave
to:
Los Lemmings y Otros (Parabellum)
by Fabian Casas
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in February, 2008
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